They continued to talk of inconsequential things, but Perrie's thoughts returned again and again to Ann's odd assessment of Joe. Perrie had seen nothing in his behavior to indicate that he cared in the least for her. Sure, he'd kissed her a few times. But to hear Ann tell it, Joe Brennan had probably kissed half the female population of Alaska.
No, there was definitely nothing going on between them. Perrie Kincaid was an expert at reading the motives of those around her and she'd picked up nothing from Joe Brennan except hostility and disdain, punctuated by a few crazy moments of intense passion.
A few minutes later, Joe returned to the table with his empty coffee mug. "I'm afraid it's time for us to go. Perrie and I have one more stop before we head back to Muleshoe."
"So soon?" Ann cried. "It seems like you just got here."
Perrie stood and Joe helped her into her jacket. When she was all bundled up against the cold, she gave Ann a hug, then stepped back. Suddenly, she realized that she'd probably never see this woman again, and after they'd become such instant friends. Ann would live her life in the bush and Perrie would return to Seattle.
She wasn't sure what to say. "Have a nice life" seemed so trite, and "See you soon" sounded like a lie. In the end, she simply said goodbye and walked out the front door to the plane, turning back once to see Ann waving at her from the porch.
Joe helped her back into the plane and she continued to stare at the family. "They're really living life, aren't they?" Perrie murmured as he took his place in the seat in front of her.
"Yes," Joe said, "they really are."
"She's very brave. I don't think I could ever live out here."
"I bet you could," Joe replied. "In fact, I think you could do pretty much anything you set your mind to, Perrie. You just have to have a good reason to do it."
"What would I do out here? I mean, there are no newspapers to write for, no politicians to expose, no readers who want to know the truth."
"You don't even know what you're capable of until you try."
Joe started the engine on the plane and Perrie girded herself for a white-knuckle takeoff. Maybe Joe was right. Maybe she'd been so occupied with her career in Seattle that she'd never even considered any other options.
But why should she? She loved her job. And she was perfectly satisfied with her personal life. What more could she possibly want? She had no answer for that question, but she sensed that somehow Ann Gebhardt, a woman who lived in the middle of nowhere and existed on nothing, had much more than Perrie would ever have.
Perrie stared out the window of the Super Cub as it skimmed over a vast, flat landscape-endless white from horizon to horizon. It looked so different from the mountains and forests that surrounded Muleshoe. She glanced at her watch and realized they'd been in the air nearly a half hour, easily enough time to get back to the airstrip at Muleshoe.
She sat up and tapped Joe on the shoulder. "Where are we?" she asked.
"That's the southern edge of the Yukon Flats below us," Joe replied. "We're not far from Fort Yukon and the Arctic Circle. I thought we'd take a little side trip. I have something special I want to show you."
"We're that far north?" Perrie asked. "What are we doing up here?"
Joe looked over his shoulder and smiled. "You'll see," he said.
A few moments later, Perrie felt the plane begin to descend. "What's wrong?" she asked, trying to keep the panic from her voice.
"Nothing. We're going to land."
She stared down at the desolate wilderness below. Unlike the small area they'd landed in at the Gebhardts', there were plenty of wide open spaces to put down here. But there wasn't a cabin in sight. "There's nothing down there."
"There's a lot here," Joe replied, peering out the window, searching for something in the snow below. "You just have to look a little more closely."
He finally set the plane down on a wide, treeless expanse of snow, landing so smoothly the only thing that told her she was on the ground was the hiss of snow beneath the plane's skis. He shut the engine down, then helped her out of the plane, tossing a pair of down sleeping bags at her feet.
"We're spending the night here?" Perrie asked.
He threw a thick blanket over the engine to keep it warm. "Only if you get really lucky," he teased. "Come on."
They walked away from the plane, his eyes scanning the area, still searching. Then he stopped and unrolled the two sleeping bags. Wrapping one around her shoulders, he pointed to the ground. Once she was settled, he sat down beside her in the snow and handed her a pair of binoculars.
"Are you going to tell me what we're looking for?"
"Just be quiet and watch," he said.
They sat, silently, for more than a half hour. Though the sun was bright and the air calm, she still felt the cold seeping into her bones. She was about to ask him when they would leave when he slowly raised his arm and pointed to the horizon. "There," he murmured.
She held up the binoculars and stared out over the snow. A movement in her field of vision caught her attention and she carefully focused. Her breath caught in her throat as a huge gray wolf appeared out of the snow.
"I saw him for the first time about three years ago," Joe explained. "I was flying some supplies up to Fort Yukon in the Otter and had some engine trouble, so I had to put the plane down. I was working on the engine when all of a sudden I looked up and there he was, watching me."
"Weren't you afraid?"
"Wolves aren't aggressive. They're afraid of man and would never attack unless they're provoked. Or sick. I think he was just a little lonely, wandering around out here on his own. He was a lone wolf, a male without a family. Probably kicked out of his pack by the alpha male."
Perrie glanced over at him. "Burdy called you a lone wolf once."
Joe smiled. "I guess I am. But not as alone as Romeo was. He was completely alone."
"Romeo?"
"That's what I named him. Every time I flew up here I'd check on him. Sometimes I wouldn't see him for months, and then, there he'd be. He's harder to spot in the winter since he has to wander farther for food. But I think he's starting to recognize the sound of my plane."
"Really?" Perrie asked.
Joe laughed. "No. I'd just like to think we're friends."
"You do have a lot in common."
"Maybe." He paused, scanning the area with his binoculars again. "At least we did, until he found Juliet Look, there she is."
Perrie trained her binoculars to the left of Romeo. Standing near the huge gray wolf was a smaller black wolf. "His mate?"
"Yeah. Romeo finally decided to settle down a couple years back. I guess he got tired of playing the field."
"Maybe you should have given him some advice," Perrie teased. "The way I hear it, you've got quite a way with the ladies."
"Don't believe everything you hear," Joe said.
"If I were writing a story on your love life, Brennan, I'd have more than enough confirmation to go to print." Perrie studied the wolves for a long moment, then put the binoculars in her lap and looked at Joe. "What about you?" she asked. "Do you ever think about finding a Juliet?"
"Wolves mate for life. I'm not sure I'm the type to be with one woman forever."
"Me, neither," Perrie said. "I mean, with one man. I suppose some people are happy with that. But I've never met a man that I could imagine spending the rest of my life with."
"Maybe you just haven't met your Romeo," he said softly, looking down at her.
"And maybe you haven't met your Juliet," she countered.
His gaze locked with hers, and for a moment, she thought he might kiss her. But then he turned away. "Look," he said. "There's the rest of the family."
Three other wolves appeared behind Juliet, about the same size as their mother but lankier.
"They had five pups last summer," Joe explained, "but they lost two of them sometime in the fall. I'm not sure what happened."
"That's sad," she said.
"That's life in the wil
derness," he replied. He glanced at her again. Then, without hesitation, he leaned over and touched his mouth to hers. His lips were incredibly warm, sending a pulse of heat through her body that seemed to drive away the cold.
His tongue teased at hers, and for an instant, she thought about drawing away. But her common sense had fled and she was left with only instinct and the overwhelming need to have more. Unlike their first, challenging kiss or the frantic meeting of mouths that they'd experienced in the snow, this kiss was different. It was slow and delicious, filled with a longing that she didn't know existed between them.
She didn't want him to stop this time. Instead, she wanted to pull him down on top of her and find out how Joe Brennan really felt about her. And how she felt about him. As if he read her thoughts, he gently pushed her back into the soft down sleeping bag, his lips never leaving hers.
Everything that had stood between them-the arguments, the mistrust, the fight for control-simply dissolved, swept away by the stark solitude of the wilderness. They were completely alone, a brilliant blue sky above and nothing but untamed country all around them.
She felt wild, primal, uninhibited, like the wolves they'd watched, driven by instinct and pure need. She wanted to touch him, to feel his skin beneath her fingertips, to run her hands through his hair. Impatiently, she slipped off her mittens then clutched at the front of his down jacket, pulling him closer.
He groaned softly, his breath hot against her mouth. "We're doing it again," he murmured. "You're making me crazy, Kincaid."
"I know," Perrie said, breathless. "We should stop. But I don't want to stop."
"No, we shouldn't stop," Joe said, tugging off his gloves. "Not this time." He pushed her hat off to furrow his hands into her hair. Tipping her head, he kissed her again, deeper and longer, his mouth plundering hers until her head spun with uncontrolled desire.
She shuddered, the passion radiating through her in waves. Joe pulled his sleeping bag over them both, ere-ating a warm cocoon. Slowly, he tugged at the zipper of her jacket, then slipped his fingers beneath the layers of sweaters she wore. When he finally met warm skin, she heard him suck in his breath and hold it.
"This is not the place to do this," Joe said. "It's ten below zero."
"It's warm enough," Perrie said.
Joe pushed himself up, then looked at her, playfully running his finger along her bottom lip. "But there are much warmer places to be, sweetheart. We don't have to risk frostbite to be with each other."
Perrie closed her eyes. "You know, we'd be risking a lot more than frostbite if we let this happen again." Her common sense had returned in full force and she sat up and tugged her jacket closed. "This is ridiculous, Brennan. We can't keep doing this."
"Why not?" Joe asked.
Perrie opened her mouth to reply, then realized she didn't have a good reason. There had to be a reason. "Because we can't."
Joe nuzzled her neck. "That's not a good reason, Kincaid. If you ask me, we do it pretty well."
"That is not the point," she scolded, pushing him away.
"What is the point?"
"I don't know." The truth was, she did know, but she was too embarrassed to put her feelings into words. She liked Joe Brennan and she liked it when he kissed and touched her. And she thought about him a lot more than she wanted to. The problem was, she didn't want to be like all the other women who had lost their hearts to a quick smile and handsome face. "I-I don't know," she repeated softly.
"Well, until you do, I'm going to keep kissing you, whenever and wherever I want."
Perrie zipped her jacket then began to search for her mittens and her hat "I think we'd better go now."
Joe grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. A long, lingering kiss shook her resolve and she found herself slipping back into the languid pool of desire she had just left behind.
"Whenever and wherever," Joe murmured, nibbling at her lower lip. With a teasing grin, he kissed the end of her cold nose, then scrambled to his feet. He offered her a hand up and she took it, expecting him to draw her back into his arms.
But he didn't. Instead, he grabbed the sleeping bags from the ground and rucked them beneath his arm. "Come on, Kincaid. Let's get you back home where you'll be warm and safe."
Chapter Six
The story seemed to tumble out of her head, word after word, sentence after sentence, as if the entire text had been there all along. The wolves and the Gebhardts, two families living in the midst of the wilderness, bent on survival. Perrie had stayed up all night putting her thoughts onto paper, rewriting each phrase until it was as perfect as it could possibly be.
She wasn't sure what had made her pick up pencil and paper. She had barely stepped inside the door of her cabin after saying a quick and uneasy goodbye to Joe, before she sat down and began to write. And until she began, she hadn't realized that her day with Joe had affected her so deeply.
Joe had called her name as she ran back to the cabin, but she'd been intent on putting some distance between them. Whenever they were together, all her resolve went right down the drain. Either they fought like a pair of pit bulls or they jumped on each other like a couple of hormone-charged teenagers. Until she figured out exactly how she wanted to handle Joe Brennan, she was going to stay away from him. So she wrote.
The day had faded, and rather than switch on a light, she brought an old kerosene lamp to the table. The soft glow seemed to enfold her in a world of her own making, a world without modern conveniences… deadlines and sources… story meetings and proofreaders. For the first time in many years, she wrote from her heart, not from her head. And she rediscovered the true joy of crafting a beautiful sentence, of taking a reader to a place they'd never been.
She had worked all night, catching only snatches of sleep before another turn of phrase would invade her dreams and she'd need to get up and jot it down. Then she would sleep again, and sometimes, mingled with the images of the wolves, she'd see Joe and he would become part of her story, personifying the wolf who had roamed the frigid winters alone.
She had tried to put their encounter in the wilderness out of her head. But it returned again and again. At first, throwing herself back into her work had been an antidote, the perfect way to put his kisses out of her head. But later, she enjoyed the memories, lingering over them as she wrote, reliving the feel of his hands on her body, his mouth over hers.
The day had dawned bright and clear, and when Perrie awoke she saw the story scattered beside her over the quilt. Slowly, she reread what she'd written, making a few more edits. Then she got up and carefully recopied the text onto clean paper. Though she'd brought her laptop along with her, this story didn't want to be written on a computer. This story was more like a letter-a letter from the wilderness.
Although this wasn't the type of story she usually wrote, she was still proud of how it came out. And she was anxious to find out if Milt thought there was any merit in the writing. Not that he'd run the story, but perhaps he'd enjoy her insights on Alaska.
"A fax machine," she murmured, tugging a bulky knit sweater over her head. "They've got to have a fax machine up at the lodge." Perrie retrieved her mukluks from near the door and pulled them on, then grabbed her jacket and the sheaf of paper that was her story.
The air was crisp and biting and her breath clouded in front of her face as she trudged up to the lodge. The low log building had stirred her curiosity more than once since she'd arrived, but she'd tried to avoid it, knowing that Joe lived inside. She preferred the privacy of her own cabin.
As she stepped up onto the wide porch, she noticed an old carving above the door. No Wimin Kin Pass. Perrie smiled. Obviously the bachelors who lived inside felt it necessary to protect themselves from predatory females. Below the large block letters, she read another phrase. "Except for Julia," she murmured.
Perrie stepped back, wondering who Julia was and why she was admitted entrance to the lodge. "Well, if Julia can go inside, I certainly can," Perrie said.
S
he hesitated for a moment and tried to come up with an offhand greeting for Joe. After what had passed between them yesterday, she wanted to make it clear that she would not tolerate any more spontaneous kissing… or touching. She'd be polite and friendly. And when she felt that familiar surge of desire that raced through her whenever he came near… well then, she'd just turn around and walk away.
Her resolve firmly in place, Perrie rapped on the front door and waited for a reply. But when no one came to answer, she knocked again. After the third try, she decided to venture inside.
The interior of the lodge was a complete surprise. She expected something as rough as the exterior. But instead, she entered a huge room that combined a cozy country feel with rugged log walls and a stone fireplace. Brightly colored woven blankets draped the chairs and sofa, and scattered about the room were interesting little pieces of Alaskan art-a carving here, a handwoven basket there. Rag rugs covered the plank floors and a fire snapped and popped in the fireplace. Compared to her bare-bones cabin, the lodge was backwoods luxury.
"Hello?" she called. "Is anybody home?"
Her call was answered by a high-pitched voice and a flurry of footsteps. A small boy, pale-haired and wide-eyed, appeared from the rear of the other side of the great room. "I'm here!" he cried.
When he saw her, he stopped short then adjusted his glasses on his upturned nose. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm Perrie. Who are you?"
"I'm Sam. I live here. Are you looking for my dad?"
Perrie frowned. "That depends on who your dad is," she said. Joe hadn't said a word about having a son, and Hawk didn't seem like the fatherly type. One of the brides had mentioned that the third partner in the lodge had recently married, but he hadn't been married long enough to have a child so old. "I'm looking for Joe."
Sam sauntered up to her side and studied her unabashedly. "Joe isn't my dad, he's my uncle. Well, he's not really my uncle, he's more like a big brother. Or maybe my best friend. My dad's name is Tanner. He's really my stepdad. We flew in from Fairbanks this morning." His eyes twinkled. "Boy, are my arms tired." A giggle burst from his lips and Perrie couldn't help but smile. His laughter was infectious. "That's a joke," he said.
Dodging Cupid's Arrow Page 10
